英国政府的影子科学，研究和创新部长Chi Onwurah呼吁对该国对高级制造的态度进行改头换面。
在HPwebinar dedicated to examining how advanced technologies such as 3D printing can help boost the UK government’s ‘leveling up’ agenda, Onwurah highlighted the need for a revamp to the way small-to-medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and young people are encouraged to learn about and adopt them.
During the event, the Shadow Minister was also joined by HP’s own Emilio Juarez and James Kent, as well as experts from across 3D printing, such as制作英国Verity Davidge andPrinting Portal’s詹姆斯·霍金斯。Though only an hour long, the discussion generated various proposals for ways to make British manufacturing more competitive, including Onwurah’s call for greater state support for the sector.
“Having innovation in advanced manufacturing is absolutely essential to competing on the global stage, but all regions [of the UK] don’t have the same level of investment in research and development,” explained Onwurah. “We need investments in R&D, particularly for small businesses to commercialize it, so it’s part of their manufacturing evolution, and we need that to be better distributed around the country.”
“升级”英国制造业
HP’s ‘how digital manufacturing is vital for the UK’s ‘leveling up’ transformation’ webinar was organized in response to government plans to invest in growth outside of London, as a means of more evenly distributing prosperity across the UK.
In February 2022, this policy was crystallized in the form of aLevelling Up White Paper, which went on to pledge various political changes and spending increases, designed to be implemented over the next decade. Through the document, the government has committed to “reverse the historic decline” in UK manufacturing, and “encourage the sort of innovation” in the sector seen in South Korea and Israel.
但是，在惠普的活动期间，Onwurah声称英国政府的升级计划还不够远。在网络研讨会上，影子部长呼吁进一步投资于高技能工人，以便他们可以使用高级技术，除了对初创企业和中小型企业提供更大的支持，以理解其利益，以及在需要的情况下，以国家支持的飞行员来寻找新申请为他们。
Onwurah说：“我认为政府，地方当局和地方企业合作伙伴关系在广告和促进先进技术的好处，而且通过弹射器和其他中心进行驾驶。”“税收优惠和本地业务支持也可以提供帮助，这就是我所看到的，尤其是在支持初创企业和新采用者方面。”
Encouraging sustainable growth
Following an initial discussion around the potential efficacy of current plans to level up UK manufacturing, Kent steered HP’s event towards the thorny subject of sustainability. As Director of Policy at Make UK, which represents manufacturers around the country, Davidge had a lot to say on the topic, and highlighted how the UK’s decarbonization drive is also stimulating innovation across the sector.
“The [UK government’s] net-zero ambition is quite a challenge. It’s ambitious to get to net-zero by 2050. For manufacturing, that means halving our emissions within the next eight years, but it’s also a massive opportunity,” said Davidge. “In terms of actually making those energy-efficiency improvements, around a third of our companies say they have adopted digital technologies [to do so].”
As well as helping manufacturers drive down their emissions, Davidge suggested that those which have “invested in robotics, 3D printing and the like” have been better able to “weather the storm” of the pandemic. On COVID-19, Juarez agreed that it has caused such severe supply chain disruption, that firms are increasingly turning to 3D printing to in-source parts, and he sees this trend continuing.
In particular, HP’s head of EMEA 3D printing sales identified additive manufacturing’s innate ability to enable part customization without the need for expensive tooling, as a key potential driver of advanced technology adoption across the UK, and highlighted how it was able to replace certain disrupted supply chains throughout the early part of the pandemic.
On the subject of 3D printing’s capabilities, James Hawkins, MD of the UK-based service bureau Printing Portal, went further, saying there’s been a complete “step change” in how the technology’s used. In fact, in his closing remarks, Hawkins claimed that 3D printing has become much easier to adopt, hence as many as 80% of the parts produced by his firm are now end-use rather than being prototypes.
霍金斯总结说：“使用3D打印零件的总体容易性正在改善，这不仅意味着消费零售部件的采用，而且还意味着运输部门的采用。”“I think in the next few years, we’re going to see an improvement and pickup of additive manufacturing, so that users can produce either spare parts, which is obviously very useful to say, the rail industry, but also in production from the outset.”
Crystal ball-gazing in 3D printing
While it’s fairly unusual for UK members of parliament to lend their insight to the debate around driving 3D printing adoption, it’s not unheard of for those with closer ties with the industry to do so. During a visit to Protolabs, former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn highlighted, how “A lack of support for manufacturing is sucking the dynamism out of our economy。”惠普本身以前已经发布了Digital Manufacturing Trends Report, through which it has sought to chart the technology’s future course, by interviewing decision-makers from across the sector.
最享盛名的3 d printing reports is that compiled byWohlers Associates，一家咨询公司，现在在国际ASTM。在其最新分析中Wohlers报告2022, the company has highlighted how the additive manufacturing sector grew faster in 2021 than in 2020, as the pandemic began to recede.
有时，尸体具有更大的股份，例如世界经济论坛, also contribute their expertise to the discussion around 3D printing’s future, and ahead of this year’s meeting, it published a paper on the subject. This study not only predicted that3D printing could achieve a major leap在市场份额中很快，但概述了可能发生的变化。
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Featured image shows the UK’s Shadow Minister for Science, Research and Innovation, Chi Onwurah. Photo via Business Insider.
